Works in the Public Domain

When a work becomes available for use without requiring that permission be granted by a copyright owner, it is described to be in the public domain. Most of what exists in the public domain today is there because the copyright on the work has expired over time. You should naturally assume that every work has copyright protection until you can establish that it is in the public domain.

Determining Public Domain

In order to determine whether or not a particular work is in the public domain, you have to find out when the work was initially published because this will help you figure out whether or not you can use it without permission of the owner, author, artist or whoever else may be behind its composition. To do this, you can apply the following rules in order to determine whether or not the copyright has expired based on these rules and the date when the work was created.

1. Copyrights of all works that were published before 1923 in the United States have expired, meaning that all of these works are in the public domain.
2. Works that were published after 1922 but that were published before 1978 are protected for a sum of 95 years from the initial date of publication. If the work was created before 1978 but was not published before 1978, then the copyright lasts for the author's life plus a total of 70 years.
3. For works that were published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the duration of the creator's life plus an additional 70 years, however there is an exception. If the work is a work for hire, such as work that was completed in the course of employment or work that was commissioned specifically, or if the work was published anonymously or under a pen name or pseudonym, then the copyright lasts from between 95 and 120 years depending on when the work was actually published.
4. Finally, if the work was published between the years 1923 and 1963, then you must check with the United States copyright office in order to figure out whether or not the copyright was renewed properly. If the author did not succeed in renewing the copyright, then the work has likely fallen into the public domain, meaning that it can be used.

Has the copyright been renewed or not?

The copyright office will be able to check the renewal information that you need at an hourly rate. You can also hire a private search firm that can tell you if a renewal has been filed or not. The least expensive route in this particular case is to conduct a renewal search on your own if you can. There are renewal records for works published between 1950 and the present, and they can be found online from the US copyright office.

For more information about using or protecting copyrighted works, consult with an intellectual property lawyer.